SocGen knew what Kerviel was doing: police source

Published 5:15 AM ET Mon, 18 May 2015
CNBC.com

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Senior staff at Societe Generale knew rogue trader Jerome Kerviel was placing high-risk bets in the months before he nearly brought the French bank to collapse in 2008 with nearly 5 billion euros in losses, French newspaper Liberation reports.

At an inquiry last month, the police investigator in charge of the case alleged that senior operations staff at the bank were informed of Kerviel's trades in 2007, the translated version of Liberation article said, quoting a story in French news site Mediapart,

The trader was arrested in 2008 after clocking up losses of 4.9 billion euros ($5.5 billion) in what were described at the time as unauthorized trades. Kerviel has long maintained that he was operating with the knowledge of his superiors.

Last September, Kerviel was freed after serving 110 days of a three-year sentence for his part in the scandal. In March 2014, a French appeals court overturned a ruling that would have seen him paying back all 4.9 billion of the bank's losses.